Anxiety Girl

Yes, unfortunately, very often this is the cape I wear.  When I was little my favorite thing to do was to go to my room and "imaginate."  That vivid imagination has not always served me well.  It allows me to drum up the most awful situations possible and then spend minutes, hours, sometimes days, playing said situations out in my mind..to the point of tears..mourning over things that haven't even happened.  True story.  And, this past week I paired that imagination with prescription pain medication that apparently made me crazy. (As in one morning I was blow drying my hair, innocently sitting there with brush and dryer in hand, and spontaneously combusted into hiccuping sobs.  I am still not sure what I was crying over.)  Also thrown in the equation was the reason for the pain medication, an absessed incredibly painful tooth, and life with twists and turns that I never saw coming.  This was not my best week.  And that was perhaps the biggest understatement I have ever made. I feel like I owe some of those closest to me an apology for my craziness this week...I probably owe them more than that.  Poor things had to hear me cry over these imaginary "what ifs" and pleasantly reassured me, multiple times.  (Well, they appeared pleasant on the outside...heaven only knows what they were thinking on the inside;)  One of my dearest friends did finally tell me to "stop thinking."  Ha.) 

While I am hopeful, I still don't know how this particular life situation with its twists and turns will turn out.  But, I think that's the point.  I can never know the future.  God doesn't give me grace for tomorrow.  He gives me grace for today.  I am not even guaranteed tomorrow, so why allow the enemy to steal my joy from today?  He did come to steal, kill, and destroy-and by focusing on the worry and the crazy thoughts, I am allowing him to do just that.  However, if my joy is dependent on the future, and the future occuring just as I hope, well its misplaced anyway.  My joy comes from the hope I have in Christ.  I am incredibly thankful for the gifts the Lord has blessed me with...incredibly thankful.  But, God isn't good because of those gifts...and God would still be good if He took those gifts away.  So, today I took off my anxiety girl cape.  I am done being a super worrier.  Today I chose to trust that I have a hope and a future, because I have a real relationship with a real Savior who loved me enough to give His very life for me to ensure that hope and future.  Oh, I still ask the Lord for those earthly gifts He has given me to not go anywhere, after all the Lord already knows the desires of my heart...but, I will not mourn over the "what-ifs" (those gifts should go somewhere).  I will stop thinking.  I will stop "imaginating."  I will trust.  Because He is good.